Currently there are three things that stop me from going Linux and two of those are purely software related (the third is that I don’t want to hate my work software anymore than I currently do). Is it vital software in the sense of it allowing me to work or bring me income? No. Is it something I wish to just use without fiddling after every update because I use them for fun? Absolutely yes.

I am a 90s child, so I don’t completely fit your timespan, but I remember the first PC with SuSe Linux that I built with my father from old server hardware he got from his job.

Back then his job used unix and it was pretty common in his field of work. So Linux was the natural choice for a home pc. SuSe was popular back then, I think mainly because it came on CDs and had books available.

One of the main things I remember is the hassle with network drivers, having to download them on a working pc first.

I haven’t used Linux in a decade and half (I know myself and I wouldn’t reboot once done gaming and I have one game that is not just wine or whatever and done and it’s my main one) and I still miss things from it. The first few PCs I used were Linux. It just sticks with you.

If you have to go back and forth with PSDs, GIMP falls of with layers and such. I had it happen that it basically rolls which ones to open every time on a layer heavy PSD.

While it might not be as much, it still will be something.

I work in a purely windows environment because our main software does not really exist outside of it. The hours of IT troubleshooting for the most inane things I see happening is a pretty penny as well. The newest curiosity is Teams killing my RDP session once it loads in the GUI and the IT team is utterly clueless why. It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t happen to anyone else and the only way to stop it is to kill the process via taskmanager.

And while a government might not be able to go FOSS, there are tools for communication that aren’t built like Teams.

My SO is in a government job and most of their software is some adaption on SAP or similar. They don’t have any chat apps. They use mails or telephone. They do have Skype, but that thing is a performance nightmare in their environment so they only use it if they absolutely have to.

Same goes for stuff like OneDrive. Even if you could wrangle it enough that it fits data security laws, it isn’t something they use in their daily work.

I know multiple people that do Skyrim on linux, at least one heavily modded. Outside of DyndoLOD not working right I can’t really remember any issues they had.